Daily Freeman Life Editor Ivan Lajara talks about journalism, living in the Hudson Valley, language, the Web, cats and even politics. But he shouldn't.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Richard Thompson

British singer-songwriter and amazing guitarist Richard Thompson is coming to the Bardavon, 35 Market St., Poughkeepsie, on April 17 at 8 p.m. for an acoustic evening.

Tickets range from $40 to $50, depending on location.

Tickets go on sale at 11 a.m. Friday (members have been able to buy them since 11 a.m. today)

You can buy them at the Bardavon Box Office, 35 Market Street, Poughkeepsie or by calling (845) 473-2072; at the Ulster Performing Arts Center , 601 Broadway Kingston or by calling (845) 339-6088; and online at www.TicketMaster.com or by calling (845) 454-3388.

You might remember him from his time with Fairport Convention.

And, as you know, he never stopped.Check this out:

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed Thompson as 19 on its list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time (the winner was Jimmy Hendrix).

His work includes more than 40 albums and some of his songs have been recorded by his fans, like Bonnie Raitt, David Byrne and Elvis Costello.

Leggo my Lego!

The Lego League Tournament takes place at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in Falcon Hall at Dutchess Community College on Pendell Road in Poughkeepsie. The competition is focusing on robotics, showing how far the blocks have come in 50 years. The tournament is for children ages 6 to 14. Call (845) 431-8421.

A history lesson that will make you dance

As you know, during the 16th Century, Peru was a colony (a "Viceroyalty" to be precise).

The Spanish Inquisition, which nobody expects, didn't feel it had oppressed and beaten people enough. So it placed a ban on drums for slaves, who were brougth to the country from many different parts of Africa to prevent them from developing a culture or identity.

Unfortunately for the culturally-challenged colonizers, the slaves would have none of it. Forced to work in farms, slaves used fruit crates, Catholic collection boxes and even the lower jawbone of donkeys to create a remarkable and infectious sound, as culture and identity was forming anew.

This tradition is alive and well today (the music, not the slavery!) thanks to the late Ronaldo Campos de la Colina. In his succesful effort to preserve black Peruvian tradition more than 30 years ago, Colina and his family fused the percussion, acoustic guitars, vocals and dances like "zapateo" (a funky and fun tap dance) into a company.

The result was Peru Negro ("Perú" to be precise), now "Cultural Ambassadors" — officially — for the South American country. The Grammy-nominated group performed in 1995 with Carlos Santana in his triumphal return to Lima, the Peruvian capital where the group is from.

TANGENT: Santana was kicked out of the country by a whacky military government in 1971 for being an "alineating" force. Because, you know, when you think of "gringos" and "yankis," you think of Carlos Santana....Here is a video of the ensemble, now comprised of a score of singers, dancers and musicians.

Peru Negro has embarked on a tour of 45 U.S. cities to promote its new album, "Zamba Malató," released a week ago. The company is stopping Tuesday at 10 a.m. and noon at the Bardavon, 35 Market St., Poughkeepsie, and at 10 p.m. Wednesday at the Ulster Performing Arts Center, 601 Broadway, Kingston.

Tickets are a modest $10. For more information call Kay Churchill at (845) 473-5288, extension 106 or send an e-mail to kchurchill@bardavon.org.

Full disclosure: I'm from Peru, I've seen the group and I love them.I can guarantee you that if you see them, you'll love them too (but I can't help you with the "being from Peru" part).

Here's another video that'll make you dance (see if you spot the jawbone):

Blind Boys of Alabama in Bearsville

The legendary group The Blind Boys of Alabama is coming to the Bearsville Theater, 291 Tinker St., Bearsville, Saturday at 9 p.m.

Tickets are $48 reserved, $33 at the door.

Check out some sounds from the Boys at their Web site, which includes tracks from their upcoming album, "Down in New Orleans."The album, which hits stores Jan. 29, gets a review in Preview on Friday....Opening for them is Bret Mosley, whose latest album, "Light & Blood," was released by the label Woodstock MusicWorks in December. Freeman reviewer David Malachowski said "the whole album is like a hot summer night."

George Carlin will perform at the Ulster Performing Arts Center on Broadway in Kingston on March 16 at 7 p.m., according to his Web site.

I have no idea where you can get tickets at this point. UPAC has not announced it yet, though I received the tip from Chris Silva, executive director of the Bardavon, which runs the Broadway venue. So information will be surfacing soon.

The return of the King

Readers may remember that in 1998, when B. B. King was scheduled to perform at the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston, the bluesman refused to get off his tour bus.

"Lucille," King's guitar, was on a different bus and was yet to arrive. The mayor of the city, the late T.R. Gallo, sent city police officers to find the bus, whose driver was going around town trying to find UPAC.

(Which begs the question, how do you get lost trying to find UPAC?)

Gallo set up a police escort to find the guitar and bring it to the Broadway venue (and nowadays people complain about overtime!)

''Well, the police come tearing up Broadway with this bus that had nothing on it but a guitar and the crowd roars and then B.B. runs on stage, holding the guitar above his head and says, 'I want to thank the mayor of Kingston for saving my Lucille,' '' said a laughing Ron Marquette, UPAC's then executive director, in an interview with the New York Times.

Kingston Mayor James Sottile should make note of that. If he were to go to Poughkeepsie and Lucille gets lost again, the mayor could go outside and save the day himself.

On Sunday night, she'd taken a wrong turn on a bus, led astray, nearly alone, somewhere in Kingston, people guessed.

About 1,500 people were waiting for King to perform his classic blues-style play at the Broadway theater, but Lucille - King's signature model semi- hollow Gibson guitar - was lost. The concert would not begin until Lucille, packed on a second bus, was put squarely into his hands.

"The place was packed and I had to tell them something," Marquette said Monday. "I just got on the microphone and I said we have a bit of a problem. Lucille is lost on a bus."

Enter Mayor T.R Gallo and the Kingston Police Department.

"I talked with (Marquette) and he told me Lucille was on the bus and it was lost," Gallo said.

Undaunted, Gallo lumbered onto King's bus and told the bluesman not be blue. King's performance was to start at 8:10 p.m.

"I assured him that we would do everything we could do," Gallo said.

Gallo's call went out to police with a, well, obvious clue. The missing bus had "B.B. King written all over it," the mayor said.

Sgt. James Brophy took the call. He dispatched a couple patrol cars, out to the Thruway circle and Uptown.

Meanwhile, concert-goers ventured outside the arts center, to take in warm air. Others waited for King to emerge from the tour bus, Marquette said.

"There was quite a gathering on the street," Marquette said. "There was a kind of community friendliness."

Marquette knew, though, that geniality might turn to hostility if Lucille weren't found soon. Concert-goers paid between $30 and $50 a ticket.

But about 15 minutes after Gallo made his call to police, Officer Patrick Scanlon found it on Washington Avenue, near Greenkill Avenue.

Two flashing-light patrol cars - one in front, one in back – escorted Lucille's bus to her destination.

Marquette said the guitar was delivered to King, a rousing cheer rose up from onlookers, and he started his show 40 minutes late.

"He walked on stage and comes out holding Lucille over his head and there was just a major standing ovation," Marquette said.

At the concert's end, Gallo was brought on stage by King and thanked for his effort in finding the guitar, an instrument with a body of laminated maple and an ebony fingerboard.

Sidney Seidenberg, King's manager, said the guitarist's ardor for the Gibson is, to say the least, intense. The guitar was named after a woman two men fought over in an Arkansas club that caught fire in the mid-1950s while he performed. King rescued his Gibson from the inferno and ever since each Gibson he plays is named Lucille.

Seidenberg said King had returned to the United States Saturday night from England, after playing alongside another blues perfectionist, Eric Clapton, during a concert in that country.

"B.B. says Lucille is his only love," Seidenberg said. "It is because it is the only girl that he knows that doesn't talk back to him.

More funny stuff

Saturday Night Live's "Goat Boy" ("Remember the '80s?") comedian Jim Breuer, known in New Paltz as a character in Dave Chappelle's "Half Baked," is coming to (where else?) SUNY New Paltz on April 13 at 8 p.m.

He's asking college students to send him pictures, since he's documenting the whole tour.

Funny stuff

Raunchy comedian Jim Norton is coming to Bananas Comedy Club in Poughkeepsie in early February for four shows.He has appeared on his own Comedy Central special, HBO’s “Monster Rain”, and in radio's Opie & Anthony (you get the idea).

He's playing the venue at the Holiday Inn on Route 9 on Feb. 8 at 8 and 11 p.m. and Feb. 9 at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Tickets are hot and $25.

If you dare, here's a clip.

Norton also was a character on HBO's "Lucky Louie," the network's first traditional sitcom (with cursing, since it's HBO).Useless trivia: The main character of the defunct sitcom is comedian and writer Louis C.K., who hides in Hudson.

That's just what's coming up through February, and I'm pretty sure I missed at least a dozen other shows....I used to joke that with so many awards shows, one of them was going to end up with an award.

Alas, that actually happens every year.

Case in point, The 79th Annual Academy Awards was nominated for seven Emmys last year.SEVEN.At the end, The Oscars received two Emmys (as weird as that sounds), for Outstanding Art Direction For A Variety, Music Or Nonfiction Programming and Outstanding Music Direction.

And that's not the only weird thing.I mean, if there are some many "outstanding" shows out there, how come there's nothing good to see on TV? (HBO doesn't qualify since "it's not TV").

Meat pies!

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" jumps from the big screen to the stage.Begining Friday night, The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck on Route 308 is staging the bloody musical about the 19th Century London barber whose customers end up in pies.

There will be no blood on the stage (maybe), but there are assurances that there will be pies made with 100-percent pasture-raised, grass feed meat.

A combination of "LOL" (laugh out loud) and, well, "cat," it refers to an odd or funny picture of a cat with a humorous and intentionally ungrammatical caption in large block letters. The pervasive cats are all over the Web with their grammatically incorrect musings. The dialect makes text messaging look like Shakespeare.

Exhibit A:

This image was taken from http://icanhascheezburger.com/, which has hundreds of awfully spelled messages from very cute cats.It's ridiculously funny and worrisome. And it's spreading.

Green-: (prefix/compounding form) - Designates environmental concern, as in "greenwashing."Surge: An increase in troops in a war zone.Waterboarding an interrogation technique in which the subject is immobilized and doused with water to simulate drowning.Googlegänger: A person with your name who shows up when you google yourself.

Unfunny business

The following was made possible by the writers' strike.

* The Golden Globes Awards ceremony has been cancelled, the Associated Press reported today. It will be replaced by a news conference, which promises to be as unfunny as a White House Press briefing (although those can be amusing).

* "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" return tonight to Comedy Central, without their writers. Stewart and Colbert cannot write their own jokes, either. Here's a guess tonight's show is going to be unfunny and a ratings hit because people want to see what will happen.

Regardless of where one stands on this issue (and most are with the writers), this whole situation is becoming increasingly annoying. And it won't be long before the public starts blaming both sides. If they don't settle, Hollywood is going to be filled with even more reality shows.

How crude!

Congratulations to dead dinosaurs!

Their oily remains, when put in a barrel, reached $100 for the first time ever today.

I believe the industry term for the fuel is "light, sweet crude." So light, sweet crude for February delivery ended up closing at $99.62 a barrel today, still a record that, surely, will soon be broken.